Aspects of Wilde

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Aspects of Wilde

Joseph Rushton Wakeling

I examine the idea that Oscar Wilde’s writings suggest a pessimistic

view of his society but a more hopeful view of humanity.

That Oscar Wilde’s writings are concerned with society is surely not a

disputed point. Yet the light touch and whimsical tone of much of his output

has dissuaded many from attempting a serious study of this side of the writer

[Stephen 1991, p.278]. This essay will examine the views of society and humanity

put forward in Wilde’s writings and in the process demonstrate how the

notions put forward above are supported by primary, if not secondary,

sources.

Specifically, we will attempt to show Wilde’s distaste for the hypocrisy,

snobbery and cruelty of late Victorian society (note the hypothesis put

forward is that Wilde was pessimistic about his society; contrast this with the

much more positive views of American society espoused in Personal

Impressions of America [Wilde, pp.938 41] ). We will also show that, despite this,

Wilde maintained a much more positive opinion of humanity itself,

manifesting itself (amongst other ways) in a belief in the capacity of the

individual for acts of self sacrifice or love, and the firm conviction that

humanity was capable of altering society for the better.

We will examine works from all periods of Wilde’s life, but will deal

separately with those that date from before his trial and imprisonment in 1895

and those written afterwards. While it will be shown that the same basic

elements—a cynical view of society, but a positive view of human beings—

underpin his thinking in both these periods, the aspects of society andhumanity that concerned him most changed considerably during this time.



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We will also deal separately with Wilde’s first play, Vera, or The Nihilists, which

we will examine first so as to get an idea of the young Wilde’s attitudes to

society and humanity.

One last note: we will be examining Wilde’s writings only in this essay.

Wilde in context as a critic of society and humanity would be an interesting

topic, but the question in this case is what can be inferred from Wilde’s

writings. The result of this alone already forms a sizeable essay!

* * *

CZAREVITCH: Warmed by the same sun, nurtured by the same air,

fashioned of flesh and blood like to our own, wherein are they

different to us, save that they starve while we surfeit, that they toil

while we idle, that they sicken while we poison, that they die while

we—

CZAR: How dare—?

CZAREVITCH: I dare for all the people; but you would rob them of

common rights of man.

— from Vera, or The Nihilists [Wilde, p.703]

In the opening passages of his excellent biography of Wilde, Richard Ellman

refers to a letter written, by the young Oscar, to his mother. He notes, ‘The

person we think of as Oscar Wilde is assembling here.’ [Ellman 1987, pp.3 4] Some

similar lessons may be learned from Wilde’s first play, Vera, or The Nihilists

[Wilde, pp.681 720] .

While the ‘slant’ of the play is very different from that of Wilde’s later

dramatic works, there are a number of aspects to it that seem characteristic of

much of Wilde’s subsequent work. The hatred of tyranny and inequality

(voiced mainly through the young Czarevitch Alexis) is unsurprising given



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that Wilde was a child of Irish nationalists [Ellman 1987, p.115], but what seems to

concern Wilde more is the deleterious effect that tyranny has upon its victims:

the Nihilists, whose cause is sympathetic, have been made so bitter and

twisted by their sufferings and deprivation1 that annihilation is all that they

can think of. Or as Vera puts it: ‘Greedy that you are of gain, every man’s

hand lusting for his neighbour’s pelf, every heart set on pillage and rapine…’

[Wilde, p.711]. Wilde would return to this area of concern in The Soul of Man

Under Socialism [Wilde, pp.1174 97] and also in his later writings from, and about,

prison.

Then there are the idle noblemen surrounding the Czar, with their

trivial complaints—take, for example, Prince Petrovitch’s ‘Since the opera

season ended I have been a perpetual martyr to ennui’ [Wilde, p.698]—take this,

set against the backdrop of the tormented Russian people. The indifference of

the upper classes to the suffering of the general populace, and their tendency,

in Wilde’s own words, to ‘treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and

1 Act Two of Vera sees this exchange:

PRINCE PAUL: The people and their rights bore me. I am sick of

both. In these modern days to be vulgar, illiterate, common and

vicious, seems to give a man a marvellous infinity of rights that his

honest fathers never dreamed of. Believe me, Prince, in good

democracy, every man should be an aristocrat; but these people in

Russia who seek to thrust us out are no better than the animals in

one’s preserves, and are made to be shot at, most of them.

CZAREVITCH (excitedly): If they are common, illiterate, vulgar, no

better than the beasts of the field, who made them so?

[Wilde, pp.698 9]



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all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality’ [Tydeman 1982, p.41]2

is another theme to which we will see Wilde return.

Yet alongside these dark portraits of society there are moments of hope.

We have a young Czarevitch willing to sacrifice his own life for the freedom of

Russia, and we have the Nihilist Vera Sabouroff who does just that [Wilde, pp.699

705 & 720]. There is even something in Prince Paul, ‘the first of that series of

artistic dilettantes in whom Wilde delights even while punishing them for

being detached and heartless’ [Ellman 1987, p.118]. For all his immorality, Prince

Paul is at least an individual, thinking for himself rather than letting others do

so for him (and perhaps this is true of Alexis and Vera as well, and is the true

source of our sympathy for them). Wilde considered individualism to be a

great virtue: in The Soul of Man Under Socialism he wrote, ‘Socialism itself will

be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism.’ Those people

enabled to develop ‘a certain very limited amount of Individualism’ are ‘the

poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture—in other

words, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all

Humanity gains a partial realisation.’ [Wilde, p.1175] In Vera, most of the

characters—even the Czar!—appear to be subordinate to the society around

them. It is only the individualists, Paul, Alexis and Vera, who have the power

to change that society, for the better, or the worse.

* * *

2 The quote is in fact originally from an article entitled ‘Mr Oscar Wilde on Mr Oscar Wilde’,

published in the St James Gazette on 18th January 1895, which describes a conversation between

Wilde and Robert Ross. Wilde is talking about The Importance of Being Earnest, but his words

seem quite applicable here.



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‘Wilde is on the child’s side: but he knows the child will only be

truly happy if it hates cruelty, treachery and poverty, if it loves

loyalty, laughter – and love. These are stories by someone in love

with love. As Tolstoy would say, it is where God is.’

— from Owen Dudley Edwards’ Introduction to Wilde’s stories

[Wilde, pp.13 14]

Vera shows Wilde at his most passionate, an angry young man with things to

say. When, some years later, he wrote his collections of fairy tales The Happy

Prince and Other Tales [Wilde, pp.271 350] and A House of Pomegranates [Wilde, pp.213 70] ,

primarily with his two young sons in mind [Wilde, p.13], he had to find more

subtle ways of making his opinions felt. Children don’t respond well to being

lectured: Wilde recognised this, and hence we have these two delightful

collections of ‘stories from an unselfconscious father … as opposed to some

assertive male chauvinist brute thundering his own dignity and morality for

the edification of his wretched offspring’ [Wilde, p.13]. Yet while it may be a ‘very

dangerous thing’ to tell a story with a moral [Wilde, p.293], the stories do all have

points to make.

The Model Millionaire [Wilde, pp.209 12] is primarily a story of hope. Wilde

subtitled it ‘A Note of Admiration’, admiration, presumably, for both Hughie

Erskine and Baron Hausberg. The former is the voice of social concern,

speaking out against exploitation and sacrificing his own comfort to help one

who he perceives as needy. The Baron is another of Wilde’s individualists,

one who has ‘realised himself’ and, contrary to the expectations of the artist

Alan Trevor (who could perhaps be seen as the voice, or ‘wisdom’, of society),

turns out to be warm hearted and generous. He is what a millionaire should

be—a philanthropist who will help others, rather than a cynic sneering at

others’ good natures. In other words, a Model Millionaire. Wilde has created

an ideal for others to aspire to: Hughie and the Baron have both, in their own

ways, risen above the petty and selfish society around them. Even Alan



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Trevor (who, one suspects, is better natured than he likes to make out) cannot

help but admire them for it. Wilde’s hopeful vision for humanity has been

stated in one of its most explicit forms.

Wilde was not, however, positing some simple ‘one good deed deserves

another’ moral, as can be seen from his later story The Nightingale and the Rose

[Wilde, pp.278 82] , in which the Nightingale’s sacrifice is casually thrown away by

the unappreciative humans. The Nightingale can be seen as another ideal,

one who is, like Wilde, ‘in love with love’ [Wilde, p.14]. Her terrible sacrifice is

not appreciated, in this case, because the people for whom she makes her

sacrifice do not truly value love. The student can only see things in terms of

their usefulness; the Professor’s daughter is only concerned with material

value. In both of these characters one can see an implicit criticism of society—

a society that is unable to appreciate beautiful things (‘Those who find ugly

meanings in beautiful things are corrupt,’ as Wilde wrote in his Preface to

Dorian Gray [Wilde, p.17]), and a society that values wealth, as in material wealth,

above the wealth of the soul, the wealth of love; a society that ‘knows the price

of everything and the value of nothing’ [Wilde, p.452]3.

The social criticisms in The Nightingale and the Rose are implied rather

than stated; those in The Model Millionaire are more often offhand comments

than direct statements. In neither case does it seem like the main focus of the

story. By contrast, we have The Happy Prince [Wilde, pp.271 7] , a tale that ends with

its central characters being ‘transfigured [through love] and borne off to God’s

hand’[Ellman 1987, p.253]

, but which takes the time on the way to mention amultitude of social injustices. Throughout the entirety of Oscar Wilde’s

fiction, on and offstage, his feelings of sorrow and anger at the inequality of

the world are perhaps never better expressed than in this passage:

3 The quote is, of course, from Lady Windermere’s Fan; but it seems appropriate to describe the

student and the Professor’s daughter.



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So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich

making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars

were sitting at their gates. He flew into dark lanes, and sawthe white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the

black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys

were lying in one another’s arms to try and keep themselves

warm. ‘How hungry we are!’ they said. ‘You must not lie

here,’ shouted the watchman, and they wandered out into the

rain.

[Wilde, pp.275 6]

Alongside this, we have the Princess, and the Mayor and Town Councillors,

for whom (one would imagine) the well being of the people would be of

prime concern; yet their snobbery blinds them to the suffering around them.

Wilde’s short stories ‘often begin with disfigurement and end, like The

Happy Prince, in transfiguration. … Most of the characters are brought to

recognition of themselves, and a recognition of ugliness and misery. Wilde

celebrates the power of love as greater than the power of evil or the power of

good.’ [Ellman 1987, p.282] The Swallow in The Happy Prince stays with the Prince,

and aids the poor and needy of the Prince’s city, because he loves him. Vera

makes her sacrifice because of her love for the Czarevitch and for Russia. In

Lady Windermere’s Fan [Wilde, pp.420 64] , Mrs Erlynne risks her own reputation,

throws away her chance of returning to ‘society’, through love for her

daughter. It is this belief in the power of love, and the capacity of human

beings to love, which forms the keystone of Wilde’s hopeful view of humanity.

If one is looking to satirise the snobbery of the upper classes, though

(or indeed for social satire in general) Wilde’s plays should be the first port of

call. In the short stories, even The Happy Prince, ‘social satire is subordinated

to a sadness unusual in fairy tales’ [Ellman 1987, p.282]; the power of love is usually

the main focus. The plays often include that same belief in love, but this time



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Wilde has set his sights on the injustices and hypocrisies of the Victorian

establishment.

In A Short History of English Literature, Robert Barnard comments that

Wilde’s plays ‘dally with social topics, no more. They mostly concern

themselves … with the question of whether a “woman with a past” can

become acceptable to “polite society”—not a topic of vital interest if you don’t

think that society worth getting into anyway.’ [Barnard 1994, p.186] Upon closer

examination of the plays, however, this statement increasingly appears to be

simplistic and misguided. True, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mrs Erlynne does

wish to re enter ‘society’. But the focus of the play is more on Lady

Windermere, and the validity of her moral principles4, than Mrs Erlynne’s

desires. Indeed, having ‘taken her chance’ [Wilde, p.459], Mrs Erlynne seems to

have had little trouble ingratiating herself with all around her. [Wilde, pp.436 42]

What Wilde is truly doing is to attack Victorian concepts of morality as crude

and simplistic, having little to do with the goodness that they claim to

represent. As Richard Ellman notes (see the footnote on the previous page),

these attacks have a wider spread than may at first be apparent: those who

society considers to be immoral (Mrs Erlynne and Lord Darlington) are shown

to have a greater understanding of goodness than those with ‘high’ moral

standards (Lord and Lady Windermere).

A Woman of No Importance features another ‘woman with a past’; this

time, Wilde uses the device to attack the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian

society head on. These attacks are quite openly voiced, and recall something

4 Richard Ellman comments that the play’s ‘critiques of catchphrases and conventional moral

blame’ are more ‘radical’ than they may at first appear. As well as Lady Windermere’s forced

re evaluation of morality, he notes a comment Wilde made that ‘Darlington is not a villain, but

a man who believes that Windermere is treating his wife badly, and wishes to save her. His

appeal is not to the weakness, but to the strength of her character (Act II): in Act III his words

show he really loves her.’ Wilde’s attacks on morality are more subtle, and more far reaching,

than is apparent at first glance. [Ellman 1987, pp.343 4]



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of the Czarevitch’s speeches in Vera with their feelings of anger and sorrow at

the inequalities of society:

HESTER: We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a

better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds

strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than

strange? You rich people in England, you don’t know how you

are living. How could you know? You shut out from your

society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and

the pure. Living, as you do, on others and by them, you sneer

at self sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely

to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and

wealth and art you don’t know how to live—you don’t even

know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch

and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy,

but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a

higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. Oh,

your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It

has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in

purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all

wrong, all wrong.

[Wilde, p.483]

Hester Worsley, the ‘puritan’, is considered by the English society ladies to be

an excessively moralising bore; ‘She is painfully natural, is she not?’

comments Lady Stutfield [Wilde, p.482]. The irony is that her apparently

unbending morality conceals a warm and loving nature, whereas the English

women possess a rigid sense of social propriety that, if broken, renders one

entirely persona non grata. Hester expresses it perfectly when she comments of

these transgressors that ‘They are outcasts. They are nameless. If you meet

them in the street you would turn your head away.’[Wilde, p.483]

Or at least if they are women you would: one of Wilde’s main concerns in this play seems



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to be the hypocritical distinctions made between the moral conduct of men

and that of women. Hester’s previous comment is immediately followed up

with,

[HESTER:] I don’t complain of their punishment. Let all

women who have sinned be punished.

LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear young lady!

HESTER: It is right that they should be punished, but don’t let

them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have

sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe

each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you

wish, on each, but don’t punish the one and let the other go

free. Don’t have one law for men and another for women. You

are unjust to women in England. And until you count what is

a shame in a woman to be infamy in a man, you will always be

unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of

cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if

seen, not regarded.

[Wilde, pp.483 4]

In this play even more than Lady Windermere’s Fan, Wilde makes the

distinction between morality and goodness. Lord Illingworth is considered to

be (however much he might protest the idea) a moral person, but he is not a

good man. Mrs Arbuthnot’s past makes her, in the eyes of society, an immoral

person, but she is a good woman. Terence Brown, in his Introduction to

Wilde’s Plays, writes: ‘The question, for example, as to what constitutes virtue

in a woman, in both Lady Windermere’s Fan and A Woman of No Importance is

shown to have no ready answer in the moral values of the age with their

simplistic, grotesquely hypocritical moral absolutes.’ [Wilde, p.353] Even Hester

comes to realise that the ‘puritan’ morality she has been taught is flawed,

comes to realise that God is not to be found in laws and strictures, but that



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‘God is only Love’ [Wilde, p.510]. Wilde appears to be suggesting that not only is

Victorian morality flawed, but that any notion of an absolute morality is

suspect; there will always be moments when it fails.

Hypocrisy is further addressed in An Ideal Husband. The apparently

happy ending can be seen in a much darker light: there is a feeling that it is

not at all a happy ending, rather an indictment of a system that allows the rich

and powerful to get away with their wrongdoings. Robert Chiltern is not a

Mrs Arbuthnot or a Mrs Erlynne, neither welcome in society since their

youthful misdemeanours; he is a rich, well thought of Member of Parliament.

It is difficult to feel sorry for him. When he lectures the supposed ‘villain’ of

the piece, Mrs Cheveley, on her ‘swindle’, when his own fortune is based on a

near identical piece of financial trickery, he is scarcely a sympathetic character.

Terence Brown reveals the dark side of Sir Robert’s high society when he

writes, ‘Wealth is a given in the lavish interiors through which Wilde’s elegant

creations live, move and have their being. … Yet it is clear from this play [ An

Ideal Husband], as from all the other social comedies, that such wealth depends

on British imperial power, on the aggressive control of world trade which has

opened a canal to the east at Suez and is now assessing similar, corrupt plans

for the Argentine.’ [Wilde, p.351] Wilde does not seem to have made many explicit

references to imperialism (apart from those in An Ideal Husband, only the

dreams of The Young King spring to mind); his concern seems to be more that

the life of the upper classes (as he says through the voice of Hester) is based

on exploitation in general. The British Empire is only a part of thatexploitation.

Bearing this in mind, when we hear Sir Robert, having exploited others

himself, refuse to help Mrs Cheveley with her scheme, one can’t help but feel

that it’s the classic case of the two kitchen utensils. The supposedly great and

good of society may ‘go over like ninepins’, in Mrs Cheveley’s words [Wilde,

p.528], but through Sir Robert’s lucky escape from ruin, Wilde creates the

uncomfortable feeling that for every corrupt or immoral person that is



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brought down, there are ten who get away with their crimes, and continue to,

again in Mrs Cheveley’s words, ‘pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility,

and all the other seven deadly virtues’ [CW, p.528]. For a short moment, Robert

Chiltern appears to have some virtue in him when he proposes to resign from

public office: sympathies are less easy to come by when we learn this is not

due to pangs of conscience over his past conduct but for selfish reasons, to

ensure his wife’s continued support. We are left with Lord Caversham’s stern

warning, that we might well see Sir Robert ‘Prime Minister, some day’ [Wilde,

p.581]. The hypocrites are still ruling the roost.

* * *

But this I know, that every Law

That men hath made for Man,

Since first Man took his brother’s life,

And the sad world began,

But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

With a most evil fan.

— from The Ballad of Reading Gaol [Wilde, p.896]

When first I was put into prison, some people advised me to try and

forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what

I am that I have found comfort of any kind.

— from De Profundis [Wilde, p.1020]

In his Introduction to Wilde’s poetry, Declan Kiberd makes a number of

references to Wilde’s social opinions, noting that ‘in Sonnet to Liberty he was

honest enough to admit that his own radicalism was motivated more by the

idea of apocalyptic change than by a deep fellow feeling with the victims of



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poverty and oppression. His refusal to sentimentalise such victims, or to

stake a claim to such empathy, would be a cornerstone of his essay The Soul of

Man Under Socialism.’ [Wilde, p.741] Serving two years’ hard labour, along with

bankruptcy, flung Wilde head on into the world of the poor and oppressed

[Ellman 1987, pp.448 9] . It was an experience that would change his opinions (or at

least areas of concern) in some respects; not in others.

One of the first things to be noticed about The Ballad of Reading Gaol

[Wilde, pp.883 99] , Wilde’s letters to the Daily Chronicle [Wilde, pp.1060 70] , and, to a

lesser extent, De Profundis [Wilde, pp.980 1059] , is that Wilde is directly addressing

issues concerning the dispossessed of society. His main concern is the horrific

cruelty of the Victorian prison system, but alongside this there are wider

social concerns. Of particular interest are his insights into the ways in which

society fails those that it punishes, and his questioning of whether society is in

fact fit to punish at all. As in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, he is concerned

with creating an improved society; unlike that essay, he proposes practical,

rather than philosophical, solutions, based on his own personal experiences.

A case in point being this extract from the second of his letters to the Daily

Chronicle:

The present prison system seems almost to have for its aim

the wrecking and destruction of the mental faculties. …

Deprived of books, of all human intercourse, isolated from

every humane and humanising influence, condemned to

eternal silence, robbed of all intercourse with the external

world, treated like an unintelligent animal, brutalised below

the level of any of the brute creation, the wretched man who is

confined in an English prison can hardly escape becoming

insane. I do not wish to dwell on these horrors … So I will

merely, with your permission, point out what should be done.



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Every prisoner should have an adequate supply of good

books … the books that compose an ordinary prison library

are perfectly useless. …

Every prisoner should be allowed to write and receive lettersat least once a month. At present one is allowed to write only

four times a year. This is quite inadequate. …

The habit of mutilating and expurgating prisoners’ letters

should be stopped. At present, if a prisoner in a letter makes

any complaint of the prison system, that portion of his letter is

cut out with a pair of scissors.

[Wilde, pp.1068 9]

There is a very real sense of anger here, deeper and stronger than in any of

Wilde’s works of fiction (the same feeling is present in his first letter, a

blistering attack on a system that sends children to prison [Wilde, pp.1060 66] ).

With some of the suggestions he makes, he does seem to have himself in mind

more than anyone else; on the other hand, it seems to be his heartfelt belief

that these changes would benefit all prisoners, and whether he is right or

wrong in this opinion (or indeed any of his other opinions) is beyond the

scope of this essay. Wilde, fully aware of the joys of art and literature, must

have been horrified to discover a world where such things were deliberately

denied; he is also quick to pick up on the way in which, by denying inmates

communication with the outside world, and censoring that which is allowed,

the prison system can conceal its worst abuses. Corruption and hypocrisy isto be found not just among the upper classes (Sir Robert Chiltern et. al.), but

in the institutions they have created.

His comments on the degrading effect of prison life recall the

Czarevitch’s speech in Vera: ‘If [the people] are common, illiterate, vulgar, no

better than the beasts of the field, who made them so?’ [Wilde, p.699] Wilde has

returned to having as his subject matter the destructive effects of tyranny.

This time, he is writing from first hand experience.



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It was first hand experience that lead to his last literary work, The

Ballad of Reading Gaol. A trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, Charles Thomas

Wooldridge, was hanged in Reading Gaol whilst Wilde was a prisoner there

[Ellman 1987, pp.472 3] . Wilde’s poem is partly an exposé of the horrors of

Wooldridge’s fate, partly an indictment of the entire system of punishment

that society deems itself worthy to mete out. (It also marks what is possibly

Wilde’s disillusionment with the power of love5, with the famous line, ‘Each

man kills the thing he loves’ [Wilde, p.884].) Richard Ellman writes that ‘In

[Wilde’s] comedies the miscreants were always pardoned, but in the Ballad,

while ultimately forgiven, they are treated vindictively by their fellows, who

are equally guilty. The poem had a divided theme: the cruelty of the doomed

murderer’s crime, the insistence that such cruelty is pervasive; and the greater

cruelty of his punishment by a guilty society.’ [Ellman 1987, p.500] The cruelty, and

the hypocrisy.

In Lady Windermere’s Fan, as we have seen, Wilde questions not just

Victorian morality, but the entire notion of whether or not any kind of

‘absolute’ morality is possible. Building on this, the Ballad suggests similar

notions regarding punishment (which is a result of moralising). Some of his

comments in De Profundis also suggest that he questions the notion of

punishment:

5 The line appears to be one of those in which Wilde draws parallels between Wooldridge’s

case and his own, though in Wilde’s case he was the victim, rather than the ‘killer’, of a loved

one. Richard Ellman notes that ‘There would come a time later when [Lord Alfred] Douglas

would ask Wilde what he meant by this line, and Wilde would reply, “You ought to know.”’

[Ellman 1987, p.473] ‘Disillusionment with the power of love’ is perhaps misguided, as in De

Profundis Wilde puts forward the idea that it was not loving enough, rather than loving too

much, that led Douglas to set in motion the events that led to his downfall [Wilde, pp.1001 2] .

However, Wilde does seem to have come to believe that love could have negative aspects to it,

especially if it were polluted with other emotions—hate, in Douglas’ case [Wilde, p.999 1000] .



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Many men on their release carry their prison along with

them into the air, hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts,

and at length like poor poisoned things creep into some holeand die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is

wrong, terribly wrong, of Society that it should force them to

do so. Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling

punishments on the individual, but it also has the supreme

vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done.

When the man’s punishment is over, it leaves him to himself:

that is to say it abandons him at the very moment when itshighest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its

actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people

shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom

they have inflicted an irreparable, irredeemable wrong. I

claim on my side that if I realise what I have suffered, Society

should realise what it has inflicted on me: and that there

should be no bitterness or hate on either side.[Wilde, p.1021]

Wilde seems to be suggesting that punishment is only justifiable if society also

takes responsibility for that punishment, by allowing for redemption once that

punishment is over. He was fully aware that when he left the prison, there

would be no life for him in Britain, possibly not elsewhere either: ‘For me,’ he

wrote, ‘“the world is shrivelled to a hands breath,” and everywhere I turn my

name is written on the rocks in lead.’ [Wilde, pp.1021 2] If society is to judge others,

Wilde appears to be saying, it must also allow for a fresh start, for a true

release from prison. The Victorian penal system is inadequate and

hypocritical.

Yet, with a future as an outcast to look forward to, Wilde did not give

up hope for himself or for humanity. The letters to the Daily Chronicle are notwritten by a despairing man; they are written by an angry man, angry at the



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cruelties of the prison system, and trying to prevent them. Wilde believed

that society could be changed for the better, and was attempting to do so.

And then we have this, again from De Profundis:

The fact of my having been the common prisoner of a

common gaol I must frankly accept, and, curious as it may

seem to you, one of the things I shall have to teach myself is

not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a punishment, and

if one is ashamed of having been punished, one might just as

well never have been punished at all. … If I then am not

ashamed of my punishment, as I hope not to be, I shall be able

to think, and walk, and live with freedom.

[Wilde, p.1021]

This recalls our first quote from the same essay, ‘It is only by realising what I

am that I have found comfort of any kind’ [Wilde, p.1020]. Wilde still maintained,

above all else, his belief in the power of Individualism, the power of those

who had ‘realised themselves’ [Wilde, p.1175]. Declan Kiberd, introducing Wilde’s

poems, notes that ‘Wilde’s Jesus is … a man who, on the Day of Judgement,

will not ask penitents why they failed to be more like him, but instead why

they refused to become themselves’ [Wilde, p.741]. Kiberd is referring to The Soul

of Man Under Socialism, but Wilde confirms that he still held this belief

following his imprisonment with his comment in De Profundis that ‘Christ was

not merely the supreme Individualist, but he was the first in History’ [Wilde,

p.1030]. If Christ is an Individualist, to become Christ like one must not attempt

to copy his lifestyle, but rather, become an Individualist oneself. Wilde still

believed in this possibility, for himself, and others.

* * *



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‘Wilde’s writings suggest a pessimistic view of his society, but a more positive

view of humanity.’ Having explored a wide range of Wilde’s works, from

short stories to essays to plays, what conclusions can we draw from our

analysis?

Wilde’s first play, Vera, or The Nihilists, shows him to be a writer with

great social concerns, demonstrating a hatred of tyranny and inequality, and a

keen feeling for the way that these injustices demoralise and dehumanise their

victims. Set in a rather abstract Russia, vaguely based around historical events

[Ellman 1987, p.116], its social criticisms are likewise somewhat abstract: general

philosophies, rather than references to specific social ills of the time.

It is in the later plays, the ‘society’ plays, that one detects Wilde’s

pessimism about Victorian society. In Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No

Importance, and An Ideal Husband, Wilde uses the drawing room comedy as a

device with which to attack the hypocrisies of high society. He criticises its

flawed morality, a morality that has little to do with good or bad, but is

merely an unbending system of rules for conduct—a system that

discriminates between men and women, between the powerful and the

powerless, between the privileged and the dispossessed. In A Woman of No

Importance, we see a woman forced into a life of ignominy because her trust

was abused by a member of the peerage. In An Ideal Husband we see a corrupt

politician able to get away with his misdemeanours without making any

recompense for them. Through these images and others, Wilde creates apicture of a society that lives on the exploitation of others, posing as ‘a

paragon of purity [and] incorruptibility’ [Wilde, p.528] when in fact it is made up

mostly of self interested snobs. It is also a society capable of cruel and brutal

acts: Wilde’s writings from and about prison paint a vivid picture of horror, of

terrible punishments inflicted by a society that does not care for its people. A

pessimistic view of society indeed.



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Yet, throughout his life, Wilde maintained a positive view of humanity,

the foundation of this being his belief in Individualism: the potential of every

human being to ‘realise’ themselves, to fully develop their fundamental being.

(One of his main criticisms of Victorian society is that it prevents many people

from being able to do this.) Those capable of fully realising themselves, of

achieving Individualism, are ‘the poets, the philosophers, the men of science,

the men of culture’ [Wilde, p.1175]—the great figures of society. Wilde suggests

that, in the right society, all human beings are capable of such greatness.

Moreover it becomes clear, on reading The Soul of Man Under Socialism, that he

believed humanity was capable of achieving such a society.

If Individualism is the foundation of Wilde’s ‘positive view of

humanity’, his belief in love, and the power of love, is its keystone. In many of

his short stories, characters are ‘realised’—achieve Individualism—through

the power of love, and through appreciating that power. In the introduction

to this essay, it was stated that Wilde’s positive view of humanity seen in his

belief in ‘the capacity of the individual for acts of self sacrifice or love’.

Perhaps that should be revised to ‘the capacity of the individual for acts of

self sacrifice through love’. It is usually because of feelings of love that

individuals in Wilde’s writings are capable of making these acts of self

sacrifice: Mrs Erlynne in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Vera in The Nihilists, the

Swallow in The Happy Prince…

Following two years’ hard labour, one might have expected Wilde to

despair. But instead we see him writing angry, passionate letters tonewspapers, attempting to change the cruel Victorian prison system for the

better; while in De Profundis he writes tenderly of the small kindnesses shown

him by friends, and by strangers too: the convict who whispered to him in the

prison yard, ‘I am sorry for you: it is harder for the likes of you than it is for

the likes of us.’ [Wilde, pp.980 1059; Ellman 1987, p.454] If prison caused Wilde to

experience first hand the extreme social ills to be found beyond the doors of

high society, it did not change his opinion that humanity was capable of



20/22

changing that society for the better (else why the letters?), and it does not

seem to have, ultimately, changed his belief in the power of love.

Ultimately, what these points seem to suggest is that Wilde’s

preoccupations—variously, throughout his life, the injustice of tyranny and

oppression, the hypocrisies and snobbery of high society, and the cruelty of

society towards those it deems to be wrongdoers—his fundamental

convictions did not change. Through all his writings there runs a vision of an

English society that is hypocritical and flawed (usually in its attitude to

‘wrongdoers’), coupled with a hope that human beings, primarily through the

power of love, could achieve great things—the greatest of all being

Individualism, the full realisation of self.

In De Profundis, Wilde wrote:

Still, in the very fact that people will recognise me wherever

I go, and know all about my life, as far as its follies go, I can

discern something good for me. It will force on me the

necessity of again asserting myself as an artist, and as soon as Ipossibly can. If I can produce one more beautiful work of art, I

shall be able to rob malice of its venom, and cowardice of its

sneer, and to pluck out the tongue of scorn by the roots.

[Wilde, p.1022]

At the height of his sufferings, he still believed himself to be capable of

asserting, if only for one last time, Individualism; and knew that others were

capable of it. However terrible society seemed, through this belief, he could

have hope for humanity.



21/22

References

[Barnard 1994] Robert Barnard, A Short History of English Literature, 2nd

Edition; Blackwell,1994 (1st ed. pub. 1984).

[Ellman 1987] Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde; Hamish Hamilton, 1987/Penguin, 1988.

[Stephen 1991] Martin Stephen, English Literature: A Student Guide, 2nd Edition; Longman, 1991

(1st ed. pub. 1986).

[Tydeman 1982] William Tydeman (Ed.), Wilde: Comedies; Macmillan, 1982.

[Wilde] Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, Centenary Edition; Collins, 1999 (First Collected

Edition pub. 1948, 2nd ed. 1966, 3rd ed. 1994).

[pp.13 15] Introduction to the Stories (by Owen Dudley Edwards)

[pp.209 12] The Model Millionaire

[pp.213 70] A House of Pomegranates

[pp.271 351] The Happy Prince and Other Tales

[pp.351 6] Introduction to the Plays (by Terence Brown)

[pp.420 64] Lady Windermere’s Fan

[pp.465 514] A Woman of No Importance

[pp.515 82] An Ideal Husband

[pp.681 720] Vera, or The Nihilists

[pp.739 44] Introduction to the Poems (by Declan Kiberd)

[pp.883 899] The Ballad of Reading Gaol

[pp.980 1059] De Profundis

[pp.1060 70] Two Letters to the Daily Chronicle

[pp.1174 97] The Soul of Man Under Socialism

Books consulted but not referenced

Michael Wheeler, English Fiction of the Victorian Period, 2nd Edition; Longman, 1994 (1st ed. pub.

1985).



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In addition, many of Oscar Wilde’s works found in the Collected Writings but not listed above

were useful and informative in preparing this essay. A short list would include The Picture of

Dorian Grey, The Importance of Being Earnest, Salomé, various poems, the introductions to the

1966 and 1994 editions of the collected writings by Vyvyan and Merlin Holland respectively,

and Merlin Holland’s introduction to Wilde’s essays. The title of the essay is taken from a set

of pictures of Wilde by Max Beerbohm [Ellman 1987].

Copyright © Joseph Rushton Wakeling 2000. This work is made available under the Creative

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Aspects of Wilde

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